The 2016 US Election (Part II)

[Simon_Jester]

I will note that Sanders in the executive branch might have considerable positive influence just by enforcing the laws already on the books. In the 2008 crash there was a lot of blatant malfeasance that was simply not prosecuted or blamed on low-level functionaries*. Having a DOJ and an SEC that did their jobs seriously, under orders to do so, might well help a lot even if the laws themselves don't change.

*What are the odds that a robo-signer for mortgages was doing what they did without the explicit permission or even command of higher authority in their own company?

[Flagg]

I will note that Sanders in the executive branch might have considerable positive influence just by enforcing the laws already on the books. In the 2008 crash there was a lot of blatant malfeasance that was simply not prosecuted or blamed on low-level functionaries*. Having a DOJ and an SEC that did their jobs seriously, under orders to do so, might well help a lot even if the laws themselves don't change.

*What are the odds that a robo-signer for mortgages was doing what they did without the explicit permission or even command of higher authority in their own company?

And then Republicans challenge the laws in court, slash funding for the SEC, and all other manner of obstruction for 4 years, Sanders gets nothing done, Republicans nominate a Romney-ish douche, win, and investigations go away.

[Raw Shark]

[snip] But we don't need gate crashers like Sanders that might actually get the nomination or rough up the one who does to the point where there's an actual party split. I don't like the Democrats myself, but if they can keep a heel on the GOP, making it a regional party and thus it wither on the vine, a real, powerful liberal movement can begin and push the Democrats left, or become a viable party in its own right.

How do you expect the party to be pushed to the left if liberal "gate-crashers" from the left of the party are rejected from joining?

[Simon_Jester]

And then Republicans challenge the laws in court, slash funding for the SEC, and all other manner of obstruction for 4 years, Sanders gets nothing done, Republicans nominate a Romney-ish douche, win, and investigations go away.

It is going to be much harder for the Republicans to challenge long-standing laws in court and defund the SEC than it is for them to block a bill in Congress by filibustering it or screwing around with procedural games in the House.

[Flagg]

[snip] But we don't need gate crashers like Sanders that might actually get the nomination or rough up the one who does to the point where there's an actual party split. I don't like the Democrats myself, but if they can keep a heel on the GOP, making it a regional party and thus it wither on the vine, a real, powerful liberal movement can begin and push the Democrats left, or become a viable party in its own right.

How do you expect the party to be pushed to the left if liberal "gate-crashers" from the left of the party are rejected from joining?

I never said he should be rejected from joining. I never even said he should be prevented from running for the nomination. I said that he shouldn't, especially this cycle when you have fucking lunatics like "Il Douche" and Raphael Cruz as the front runners for the nomination and Cruz is the lesser evil. Any risk of dividing the Democrats this election year is not irresponsible, it's fucking insane.

I'm also sick of people holding up this man as some paragon of righteousness and virtue when he shamelessly admits that he's only in the democratic primary for money and media exposure (which is pretty much money in American politics). That makes him essentially, a whore.

[Lord MJ]

[snip] But we don't need gate crashers like Sanders that might actually get the nomination or rough up the one who does to the point where there's an actual party split. I don't like the Democrats myself, but if they can keep a heel on the GOP, making it a regional party and thus it wither on the vine, a real, powerful liberal movement can begin and push the Democrats left, or become a viable party in its own right.

How do you expect the party to be pushed to the left if liberal "gate-crashers" from the left of the party are rejected from joining?

I never said he should be rejected from joining. I never even said he should be prevented from running for the nomination. I said that he shouldn't, especially this cycle when you have fucking lunatics like "Il Douche" and Raphael Cruz as the front runners for the nomination and Cruz is the lesser evil. Any risk of dividing the Democrats this election year is not irresponsible, it's fucking insane.

So lets just ignore the fact that the big money interests and the politicians they buy on both parties are ripping us off, and that the Democratic party that claims to fight for the people is just as beholden to these interests as the GOP?

You could just as easily blame the party for the split because they are more focused on looking out for the establishment and ignoring the concerns of the people that are tired of it.

I'm also sick of people holding up this man as some paragon of righteousness and virtue when he shamelessly admits that he's only in the democratic primary for money and media exposure (which is pretty much money in American politics). That makes him essentially, a whore.

Money and media exposure are... well the lifeblood of any successful presidential campaign. You through some twisted logic somehow conclude that therefore he is not virtuous and a whore.

To me it's a no brainer. Does he want to run a symbolic campaign or a real campaign for president? If Symbolic he can run as an independent. If he actually serious about running for President, he has no choice but to run as a Democrat since that's the only way he can raise money (well he gets it from unions and individual donors not the party but do you think he could amass that level of popular support without the exposure of the democratic primary) and media exposure (people need to be able to see you for you to be relevant.) Seriously of all the arguments against Sanders I've heard, this is literally the DUMBEST of them all.

[TimothyC]

The Cruz campaign may be on the verge of implosion (thanks to marital infidelity allegations).

Kasich is still standing

[Lord MJ]

The Cruz campaign may be on the verge of implosion (thanks to marital infidelity allegations).

Kasich is still standing

National Enquirer? I can only dream of Cruz's campaign going down in flames, but lets see if legit sources say the same thing.

[Lord MJ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nFnggBHFUo

Informative not just for insight into the Bush adminsitration. But also reasoning as to why Bernie Sanders could get more things accomplished as President than Hillary could with congress (only even tangentially touching on the "political revolution" angle).

[The Romulan Republic]

For me, a big part of it is that Sanders is a long-term legislator. If anyone ought to know how to work with Congress, its someone who's spent decades working as a member of it.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://abc.go.come/shows/the-view-vide ... 0_rj2i31ma

Keith Olbermann says he moved out of his Drumpf-owned apartment and that Drumpf may be the most dangerous candidate since the Civil War.

Keith Olbermann on 'The View': Says Republican Party Will Stop Trump from Getting Nomination
Keith Olbermann tells the co-hosts Donald Trump is a dangerous Presidential candidate as he feels Trump is destructive and thinks if he does not win he will be so addicted to the notoriety he may run for another office. He recently wrote an op-ed piece on why he could not stand to continue living in a Trump building. He thinks the Republican Party will stop Trump from getting the nomination, as win or lose many of them are out of jobs. Keith says Republicans can do this as they have been known to alter votes and are good at preventing things from happening that should otherwise happen. Watch "The View" WEEKDAYS at 11e|10c|p.

[bilateralrope]

TRR, your link is broken.

Also, it looks like you've been fooled by an abc.co.com URL again.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, the video's legit. I've seen it from other sources, and the View's own (verified) Facebook page had a link that took me to the page in question.

However, here be another source:

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/03/25/ ... p-win.html

Keith Olbermann returned to talking about politics, with an appearance on The View where he perfectly explained why Donald Trump won’t win.

Video:



Olbermann said, “Because of the premise of the campaign, I don’t think he has a reasonable chance of being elected. At this point, from what I’m hearing, I don’t even think he’s going to get the nomination. Because I think the Republican Party is going to say, everybody who is in the Republican Party goes if he wins, we all lose our jobs. If he loses, we all lose our jobs. He’s probably not going to win. Let’s make sure he doesn’t lose. We’re going to lose the party to him one way or another. Everybody in the Republican Party, in the establishment, has a self-interest in keeping him away because he could bring down congressional results.”

Keith Olbermann also shot down Trump threat of riots if he is denied the nomination, “To be fair, who are the people who are supporting him, generally speaking? What I’m saying is they’re mostly people who can’t really be trusted to find their own homes again once they leave them.”

The former ESPN/MSNBC anchor explained that Republicans are really good at preventing things that are supposed to happen from happening. Olbermann said, “This is their own house. This isn’t some governmental agency. They can do what they want. They can change the rules….Whatever rule they need to make to make sure that he doesn’t get the nomination.”



Olbermann was 100% right. The only path that Trump has to the Republican nomination is getting 1,237 delegates. If Trump doesn’t reach the magic number, Republicans will make sure that he is not the nominee. Olbermann’s comments on The View should remind those on the left of why his presence is so sorely missed on television. In a corporate media landscape that is dominated by conservative talking heads, Olbermann brings outstanding broadcasting skills and a point of view that is nearly invisible in the mass media landscape.

In the election cycle of Trump, the American people need to hear the voices of those of the left who are being intentionally shut out of the corporate media.

[Mr Bean]

OAN Trump has released the following statement in regards to the charge by the Cruz campaign that it was Donald Trump who planted the National Enquirer story.

I have no idea whether or not the cover story about Ted Cruz in this week's issue of the National Enquirer is true or not, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it, did not know about it, and have not, as yet, read it.

Likewise, I have nothing to do with the National Enquirer and unlike Lyin' Ted Cruz I do not surround myself with political hacks and henchman and then pretend total innocence. Ted Cruz's problem with the National Enquirer is his and his alone, and while they were right about O.J. Simpson, John Edwards, and many others, I certainly hope they are not right about Lyin' Ted Cruz.

I look forward to spending the week in Wisconsin, winning the Republican nomination and ultimately the Presidency in order to Make America Great Again.

No joke Trump is walking around and saying in effect "Well I had nothing to do with it, but it is the National Enquirer and they have been right about so many other sex scandals DOT DOT DOT. Yes I did say dot dot dot rather than trail off".

On the one hand Republican Sex Scandal, on the other hand who cares. On the third hand bwhahahah did we find 2016 Edwards? Ted seems the type to be delusional enough to try to run for office on the Republican side with multiple mistresses and per the National Enquirer one of them was a call girl who told NE that Ted was familiar with the process like he'd done it before. Meaning we might if just that tidbit is true might be dealing with some serious Governor of New York levels of call girl usage.

[The Romulan Republic]

Thought this might be of interested, pertaining to Bernie's decision to run as a Democrat:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/postever ... -democrat/

During a recent town hall in Columbus, Ohio, Sen. Bernie Sanders said the unthinkable. At least, you would have thought he did, judging by the response of several Democratic operatives. Sanders was deemed “extremely disgraceful” by Donna Brazile, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and “a political calculating fraud” by Brad Woodhouse, a former DNC communications director.

What was his crime? The old-fashioned Rooseveltian New Dealer had answered a question about why he is running as a Democrat, instead of as an independent, with typical candor: “In terms of media coverage, you had to run within the Democratic Party,” he observed, adding that he couldn’t raise money outside the major two-party process.

As one of the more successful third-party presidential candidates in recent U.S. history, I know firsthand the obstacles Sanders might have faced if he had run as an independent. The reality is that Sanders is right, and the backlash against him reflects all too well what two-party tyranny can do to a more-than-nominal third-party challenger. This is especially true of candidates like Sanders, who — despite advancing political views similar to the classic Democratic New Deal platform — now sits well to the left of the party’s corporatist, hawkish establishment.

* * *

I chose to run on the Green Party line in the 2000 presidential election with a pretty clear idea of what I was in for. I had run a limited write-in campaign in New Hampshire in 1992 and had accepted the Green nomination in 1996.

My interest in moving politics past the two-party duopoly began long before I first ran for president in 1996. Historically, many major reform movements (abolition, women’s suffrage, labor) have come out of smaller parties that never won national elections, starting with the anti-slavery Liberty Party in 1840. Several different parties for women’s suffrage followed. Then came parties representing farmers’ struggles against railroads and banks, a movement that peaked in 1892 with the Populist Party. Labor parties — which fought for fair labor standards, the right to organize and progressive taxation — rose to prominence in the 20th century, along with the Socialist Party of America, formed in 1901. But when the Communist Party got on the national ballot after World War I, it drew widespread venom, and the two major parties began to raise barriers to ballot access and undertake other efforts to prevent these small parties from competing in elections. Admiring these reform movements and critical of the Democratic Party’s decay, I knew what it would mean to run as a third-party candidate.


Just appearing on the ballot is a challenge for independent candidates. While any Democrat or Republican who wins their party’s nomination is guaranteed a place on general-election ballots nationwide, smaller parties must, in many states, petition election officials to be listed. And that is a delicate process, easy for the major parties to disrupt. Their operatives have a number of tools at their disposal to knock third-party candidates off the ballot, render their campaigns broke, and harass and ostracize them.

In 2004, Democratic operatives were especially zealous in their efforts against my campaign. They hired private investigators to harass my campaign’s petition circulators in their homes in Ohio and Oregon and falsely threatened them with criminal prosecution for fake names that saboteurs had signed on their petitions, according to sworn affidavits from the workers and letters containing threats that were presented in court. Our petitions were also disqualified on arbitrary grounds: In Ohio, complaints submitted in court and to the office of the Secretary of State by groups of Democratic voters led officials there to invalidate our petitions. They disqualified hundreds of signatures on one list, for instance, because of a discrepancy involving the petition circulator’s signature. In Oregon, Democratic Secretary of State Bill Bradbury retroactively applied certain rules in a way that suddenly rendered our previously compliant petitions invalid.

Democrats and their allies (some later reimbursed by the DNC, according to both campaign finance reports and a party official in Maine who testified under oath) enlisted more than 90 lawyers from more than 50 law firms to file 29 complaints against my campaign in 18 states and with the Federal Election Commission for the express purpose of using the cost and delay of litigation to drain our resources. “We wanted to neutralize his campaign by forcing him to spend money and resources defending these things,” operative Toby Moffett told The Washington Post in 2004.

Democrats falsely accused my campaign of fraud in state after state. In Pennsylvania, they forced us off the ballot after challenging more than 30,000 signatures on spurious technical grounds. My running mate, Peter Camejo, and I were ordered to pay more than $81,000 in litigation costs the plaintiffs, a group of Democratic voters, said they incurred. In an effort to collect, their law firm, Reed Smith ,which the DNC also hired in that cycle, froze my personal accounts at several banks for eight years. A criminal prosecution by the state attorney general later revealed that Pennsylvania House Democrats had, illegally at taxpayer expense, prepared the complaints against our campaign, and several people were convicted of related felonies. A federal court in Pennsylvania ultimately struck down the state law used against me that had led to the order that I pay the litigation costs. But Reed Smith was still allowed to keep $34,000 it withdrew from my accounts, because state courts wouldn’t let me present evidence that could have permitted me to recover the money.

With the exception of this handful of felony convictions, most of the partisans who fought to keep me from running got away with it.


* * *

Given another chance, I still wouldn’t run as a Democrat; I continue to disagree with the party’s platform and direction. Sanders is different, though: However he’s appeared on Vermont ballots in the past, he’s really a progressive Democrat. He has caucused with the party in Congress for decades, even if its corporatist core has abandoned his New Deal priorities. This is perhaps why he has been able to make it so remarkably far.

But as the backlash against his Ohio comments demonstrates, the party’s patience with Sanders is wearing thin. With today’s dominant Democrats favoring hawkish foreign policy and the entitlements of Wall Street, Sanders is seen as a Trojan horse. Cries of “get out,” already sounding in some Democratic quarters, will become increasingly fervid, notwithstanding Sanders’s years of support for Democratic causes and his pledge to endorse the Party’s eventual nominee.

By running as a Democrat, Sanders declined to become a complete political masochist, and he avoided exposing his campaign to immediate annihilation by partisan hacks. Because if he had run as an independent, he would have faced only one question daily in the media, as I did: “Do you see yourself as a spoiler?” The implication being, of course, that he had no chance of winning. His popular agenda would have been totally ignored by a horse-race-obsessed mass media, which would have latched on instead to a narrative in which Sanders was unfairly hurting Hillary Clinton’s chances against whichever Republican wound up with the other major-party nomination, as if any Democrat is automatically entitled to the votes of progressives.

Knowing that this is the fate of most independent candidates, as he put it simply in Ohio, Sanders made the right choice to campaign as a Democrat. Should he win the nomination, he will have no ballot-access obstacles to overcome in the fall. He gets to participate in televised primary debates, widely covered and commented on by the mainstream media. His scandal-free record and appealing message have resonated among younger Democratic and independent voters who are the future of progressive politics. A loyal base that believes he has a viable chance to win has allowed him to smash through the ritual of catering to fat-cat donors and super PACs to amass a highly credible campaign treasury.


Collecting nearly $150 million so far at an average donation of $27 is already a historic breakthrough for future honest candidates to emulate. In the longer run, proving that outsiders to cash-register politics can compete in the same manner may be one of the two most important legacies of the Sanders campaign.

The other is that Sanders has demonstrated the relative weakness of the corporate Democrats and their major loss of trust among the people, especially the young. “It’s sad and ironic how undemocratic the party has become,” says Bill Curry, a former White House counselor on domestic policy to President Bill Clinton and now a writer for Salon. He compares the party to “a closely held PAC used mostly to advance the careers of political insiders and the interests of corporate donors.”

I believe that should Clinton overcome Sanders and claim the Democratic nomination, the party will continue to be the champion of war and Wall Street, little changed by the primary competition. But perhaps after the comparative success of Sanders’s campaign, this state of affairs will invigorate more courageous candidates to follow his lead in challenging establishment, commercialized politics.

Its interesting that Ralph Nader, of all people, would support Sanders' decision here.

[Gaidin]

So three caucuses today for the Dems. Absolutely no information about them on 538. This will be unpredictably interesting.

[Lord MJ]

Hoping Bernie wins big in Washington. But with the other states, I don't think either candidate has really campaigned in either state.

[Gaidin]

Hoping Bernie wins big in Washington. But with the other states, I don't think either candidate has really campaigned in either state.

Bernie's wife spent three days in Alaska.

[Omega18]

Hoping Bernie wins big in Washington. But with the other states, I don't think either candidate has really campaigned in either state.

The general expectation would be that given a combination of voter trends and demographics Sanders should win them all, the key issue is by how much in order for Sanders to do enough in closing the delegate gap. (Caucus states also appear on top of everything else to generally benefit Sanders who does have tend to have the more enthusiastic supporters willing the make the greater time commitment, but the catch is few states/territories after today have caucuses with most of those having very small delegate totals.)

In terms of actually managing to close the pledged delegate gap, Sanders also has upcoming states with larger minority populations which are not as obviously favorable, including Maryland where due to a combination of a large African-American population and Hillary's performance in Northern Virginia you would expect Hillary to win decisively.

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah, I'm inclined to think Maryland will be a Clinton state.

One thing I'm wondering is if Martin O'Malley will endorse anyone before Maryland (his home state) votes. He's been pretty much silent since leaving the race, hasn't he?

[Lord MJ]

Hoping Bernie wins big in Washington. But with the other states, I don't think either candidate has really campaigned in either state.

The general expectation would be that given a combination of voter trends and demographics Sanders should win them all, the key issue is by how much in order for Sanders to do enough in closing the delegate gap. (Caucus states also appear on top of everything else to generally benefit Sanders who does have tend to have the more enthusiastic supporters willing the make the greater time commitment, but the catch is few states/territories after today have caucuses with most of those having very small delegate totals.)

In terms of actually managing to close the pledged delegate gap, Sanders also has upcoming states with larger minority populations which are not as obviously favorable, including Maryland where due to a combination of a large African-American population and Hillary's performance in Northern Virginia you would expect Hillary to win decisively.

Realistically Bernie will need to sweep the upcoming states through New York. I doubt Maryland and DC will go for him. So he'll need to make a stand in Pennsylvania and California.

[The Romulan Republic]

I doubt New York will go for him. That's Clinton home turf, for one thing, and I've seen polling that puts Clinton way ahead their (for whatever that's worth).

Its probably his biggest obstacle to the nomination.

Edit: www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-35903119

Bernie Sanders will try to claw back Hillary Clinton's lead in the race for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency on Saturday in caucus votes in Washington state, Hawaii and Alaska.
Mr Sanders remains a dogged pursuer but Mrs Clinton has 1,691 of the 2,383 delegates needed to win, AP reports.
He is still attracting tens of thousands to his rallies, on Friday calling for a "political revolution".
Mrs Clinton pointed out she has "2.6 million more votes" than Mr Sanders.
Saturday's voting is just for the Democratic nomination.
Bigger battles ahead
Mr Sanders has spent the week on the west coast, rallying support among liberals and the left-wing.
Late on Friday in Seattle's Safeco baseball stadium, he repeated key elements of his policy platform, urging economic equality and universal health care.
He said: "Real change historically always takes place from the bottom on up when millions of people come together. We need a political revolution!"
Hillary Clinton in LA, 24 MarchImage copyrightEPA
Image caption
Mrs Clinton this week condemned Republican rivals for their "reckless" foreign policies
Mr Sanders is trying to build on overwhelming victories in Tuesday's caucuses in Idaho and Utah.
However, he also suffered defeat in Arizona, and although his delegate haul from the three states was 20 higher than Mrs Clinton, he has failed to make major inroads into her lead.
Mrs Clinton has also been campaigning in Washington state. She told supporters in Everett: "We are on the path to the nomination, and I want Washington to be part of how we get there."
She also focused on this week's deadly attacks in Brussels, condemning Republican rivals Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for their "reckless" foreign policies.
Opinion polls are scarce and tricky in caucus elections - a series of meetings in which voters give their support for candidates with an open show of hands.
However, Mr Sanders has used his appeal with grassroots activists to benefit from the voting system in the past. He has done particularly well among young voters.
Washington is the biggest prize, with 101 pledged delegates available. Hawaii has 25 delegates at stake and Alaska 16.
Whatever happens on Saturday, the battle will be won and lost in far bigger states still to come. In RealClearPolitics poll averages, Mrs Clinton has the lead over Mr Sanders by nine percentage points in California, 34 points in New York and 28 in Pennsylvania.
Calculations suggest Mr Sanders may need to win two-thirds of the remaining delegates - in primaries, caucuses and among so-far uncommitted super-delegates - the unelected officials who can vote for their candidate of choice at the party's election convention.
The delegate tracker
Winning delegates, the people who endorse a candidate at the party conventions in July, is key to securing the nomination.

The Democratic totals include the delegates won per state, as well as so-called "unpledged" or "super delegates". Hillary Clinton has a huge lead among the party leaders and elected officials who each get a vote at the convention.
AP conducts surveys of these super delegates, and adds them to a candidate's totals if they indicate their support. But super delegates can - and do - change their minds during the course of the campaign, so the figures may shift as the race unfolds.
The delegate tracker is updated automatically. There may be a short delay between the delegates being assigned and the totals changing.
Feuding rivals
The Republican race has been dominated lately by feuding between Mr Cruz and Mr Trump.
Mr Cruz told reporters that Mr Trump was behind a story in the National Enquirer that alleged Mr Cruz had had extramarital affairs.
Mr Cruz called the story "garbage, complete and utter lies".
Mr Trump has threatened on Twitter to "spill the beans" on Mr Cruz's wife, Heidi, and has posted an unflattering photo of her.
Mr Cruz called Mr Trump "classless" and a "coward".
Mr Trump leads Mr Cruz by 739 delegates to 465, with a total of 1,237 needed to win the Republican nomination, AP reports.

[Lord MJ]

I doubt New York will go for him. That's Clinton home turf, for one thing, and I've seen polling that puts Clinton way ahead their (for whatever that's worth).

Its probably his biggest obstacle to the nomination.

Don't see Sanders winning without New York, unless he completely dominates California. Yes the rest of the electoral map favors Bernie, but since he decided not to contest most of the southern states, he will need to pull things out in NY. Even a tie might do, but a blowout loss in NY and it will be over.

[Flagg]

Thought this might be of interested, pertaining to Bernie's decision to run as a Democrat:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/postever ... -democrat/

During a recent town hall in Columbus, Ohio, Sen. Bernie Sanders said the unthinkable. At least, you would have thought he did, judging by the response of several Democratic operatives. Sanders was deemed “extremely disgraceful” by Donna Brazile, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and “a political calculating fraud” by Brad Woodhouse, a former DNC communications director.

What was his crime? The old-fashioned Rooseveltian New Dealer had answered a question about why he is running as a Democrat, instead of as an independent, with typical candor: “In terms of media coverage, you had to run within the Democratic Party,” he observed, adding that he couldn’t raise money outside the major two-party process.

As one of the more successful third-party presidential candidates in recent U.S. history, I know firsthand the obstacles Sanders might have faced if he had run as an independent. The reality is that Sanders is right, and the backlash against him reflects all too well what two-party tyranny can do to a more-than-nominal third-party challenger. This is especially true of candidates like Sanders, who — despite advancing political views similar to the classic Democratic New Deal platform — now sits well to the left of the party’s corporatist, hawkish establishment.

* * *

I chose to run on the Green Party line in the 2000 presidential election with a pretty clear idea of what I was in for. I had run a limited write-in campaign in New Hampshire in 1992 and had accepted the Green nomination in 1996.

My interest in moving politics past the two-party duopoly began long before I first ran for president in 1996. Historically, many major reform movements (abolition, women’s suffrage, labor) have come out of smaller parties that never won national elections, starting with the anti-slavery Liberty Party in 1840. Several different parties for women’s suffrage followed. Then came parties representing farmers’ struggles against railroads and banks, a movement that peaked in 1892 with the Populist Party. Labor parties — which fought for fair labor standards, the right to organize and progressive taxation — rose to prominence in the 20th century, along with the Socialist Party of America, formed in 1901. But when the Communist Party got on the national ballot after World War I, it drew widespread venom, and the two major parties began to raise barriers to ballot access and undertake other efforts to prevent these small parties from competing in elections. Admiring these reform movements and critical of the Democratic Party’s decay, I knew what it would mean to run as a third-party candidate.


Just appearing on the ballot is a challenge for independent candidates. While any Democrat or Republican who wins their party’s nomination is guaranteed a place on general-election ballots nationwide, smaller parties must, in many states, petition election officials to be listed. And that is a delicate process, easy for the major parties to disrupt. Their operatives have a number of tools at their disposal to knock third-party candidates off the ballot, render their campaigns broke, and harass and ostracize them.

In 2004, Democratic operatives were especially zealous in their efforts against my campaign. They hired private investigators to harass my campaign’s petition circulators in their homes in Ohio and Oregon and falsely threatened them with criminal prosecution for fake names that saboteurs had signed on their petitions, according to sworn affidavits from the workers and letters containing threats that were presented in court. Our petitions were also disqualified on arbitrary grounds: In Ohio, complaints submitted in court and to the office of the Secretary of State by groups of Democratic voters led officials there to invalidate our petitions. They disqualified hundreds of signatures on one list, for instance, because of a discrepancy involving the petition circulator’s signature. In Oregon, Democratic Secretary of State Bill Bradbury retroactively applied certain rules in a way that suddenly rendered our previously compliant petitions invalid.

Democrats and their allies (some later reimbursed by the DNC, according to both campaign finance reports and a party official in Maine who testified under oath) enlisted more than 90 lawyers from more than 50 law firms to file 29 complaints against my campaign in 18 states and with the Federal Election Commission for the express purpose of using the cost and delay of litigation to drain our resources. “We wanted to neutralize his campaign by forcing him to spend money and resources defending these things,” operative Toby Moffett told The Washington Post in 2004.

Democrats falsely accused my campaign of fraud in state after state. In Pennsylvania, they forced us off the ballot after challenging more than 30,000 signatures on spurious technical grounds. My running mate, Peter Camejo, and I were ordered to pay more than $81,000 in litigation costs the plaintiffs, a group of Democratic voters, said they incurred. In an effort to collect, their law firm, Reed Smith ,which the DNC also hired in that cycle, froze my personal accounts at several banks for eight years. A criminal prosecution by the state attorney general later revealed that Pennsylvania House Democrats had, illegally at taxpayer expense, prepared the complaints against our campaign, and several people were convicted of related felonies. A federal court in Pennsylvania ultimately struck down the state law used against me that had led to the order that I pay the litigation costs. But Reed Smith was still allowed to keep $34,000 it withdrew from my accounts, because state courts wouldn’t let me present evidence that could have permitted me to recover the money.

With the exception of this handful of felony convictions, most of the partisans who fought to keep me from running got away with it.


* * *

Given another chance, I still wouldn’t run as a Democrat; I continue to disagree with the party’s platform and direction. Sanders is different, though: However he’s appeared on Vermont ballots in the past, he’s really a progressive Democrat. He has caucused with the party in Congress for decades, even if its corporatist core has abandoned his New Deal priorities. This is perhaps why he has been able to make it so remarkably far.

But as the backlash against his Ohio comments demonstrates, the party’s patience with Sanders is wearing thin. With today’s dominant Democrats favoring hawkish foreign policy and the entitlements of Wall Street, Sanders is seen as a Trojan horse. Cries of “get out,” already sounding in some Democratic quarters, will become increasingly fervid, notwithstanding Sanders’s years of support for Democratic causes and his pledge to endorse the Party’s eventual nominee.

By running as a Democrat, Sanders declined to become a complete political masochist, and he avoided exposing his campaign to immediate annihilation by partisan hacks. Because if he had run as an independent, he would have faced only one question daily in the media, as I did: “Do you see yourself as a spoiler?” The implication being, of course, that he had no chance of winning. His popular agenda would have been totally ignored by a horse-race-obsessed mass media, which would have latched on instead to a narrative in which Sanders was unfairly hurting Hillary Clinton’s chances against whichever Republican wound up with the other major-party nomination, as if any Democrat is automatically entitled to the votes of progressives.

Knowing that this is the fate of most independent candidates, as he put it simply in Ohio, Sanders made the right choice to campaign as a Democrat. Should he win the nomination, he will have no ballot-access obstacles to overcome in the fall. He gets to participate in televised primary debates, widely covered and commented on by the mainstream media. His scandal-free record and appealing message have resonated among younger Democratic and independent voters who are the future of progressive politics. A loyal base that believes he has a viable chance to win has allowed him to smash through the ritual of catering to fat-cat donors and super PACs to amass a highly credible campaign treasury.


Collecting nearly $150 million so far at an average donation of $27 is already a historic breakthrough for future honest candidates to emulate. In the longer run, proving that outsiders to cash-register politics can compete in the same manner may be one of the two most important legacies of the Sanders campaign.

The other is that Sanders has demonstrated the relative weakness of the corporate Democrats and their major loss of trust among the people, especially the young. “It’s sad and ironic how undemocratic the party has become,” says Bill Curry, a former White House counselor on domestic policy to President Bill Clinton and now a writer for Salon. He compares the party to “a closely held PAC used mostly to advance the careers of political insiders and the interests of corporate donors.”

I believe that should Clinton overcome Sanders and claim the Democratic nomination, the party will continue to be the champion of war and Wall Street, little changed by the primary competition. But perhaps after the comparative success of Sanders’s campaign, this state of affairs will invigorate more courageous candidates to follow his lead in challenging establishment, commercialized politics.

Its interesting that Ralph Nader, of all people, would support Sanders' decision here.

It is disgraceful. I don't get why people think what he did was fine and dandy here. He basically walked into someone else's house, plopped themselves down on their couch, put his feet up on the table, and started switching channels while spending decades refusing to come in for a drink because he found associating with you distasteful. And when asked why, he says "well, they get better channels and I don't want to pay my bill".

[Gaidin]

Don't see Sanders winning without New York, unless he completely dominates California. Yes the rest of the electoral map favors Bernie, but since he decided not to contest most of the southern states, he will need to pull things out in NY. Even a tie might do, but a blowout loss in NY and it will be over.

After Super Tuesday II, people ran numbers. Here's one. All you need is google, but they largely agreed, he needed about 58% of the remaining delegates to catch up largely unless he could just suddenly get a mass exodus of Supers. A tie in New York is a net victory for Clinton because it's big enough delegate wise that his needs everywhere else in May and June then go further up, and I'm not sure anybody's willing to bet on California being that much in his pocket, much less when they both start contesting it.